Company Name : Unilever Foundry

Friday, July 14, 2017 10:15AM IST (4:45AM GMT)

(BW)(UNILEVER-FOUNDRY)

Unilever Foundry Launches in Ireland in Partnership with Dogpatch Labs

Partnership to launch a collaborative workspace for Irish startups and innovators to engage and explore business ideas with Unilever Foundry

London, United Kingdom

Unilever Foundry launches in Ireland, in partnership with leading startup hub, Dogpatch Labs, bringing together startups and entrepreneurs to fuel innovation and create new partnerships that deliver real and meaningful business impact.

Unilever Foundry’s expansion to Ireland presents a huge opportunity for Irish startups ready to scale up, by providing a clear path to collaborate with Unilever’s 400+ brands and functions and pilot their product.

As the entry-point for innovative tech companies seeking to connect with Unilever, Irish startups will have the opportunity to scale globally using Unilever Foundry’s unique “Pitch-Pilot-Partner” approach, dramatically cutting the time it takes to get a new initiative to market. At launch, the innovation focus is on digital retail experiences, marketing tech and sustainable living. Startups will be invited to respond to a related business challenge with the opportunity to pilot their technology with a Unilever brand, which if successful, could be rolled out across Unilever’s portfolio.

Located in the heart of Dublin, Dogpatch Labs’ co-working space supports startups and the tech community by providing a space to grow, share knowledge and form connections. A monthly events programme at Dogpatch Labs’ co-working space will give startups the opportunity to network and collaborate with others working within the space.

Unilever Foundry is on a mission to transform Unilever growth models to make sustainable living commonplace by collaborating with innovators. To date, the platform has launched over 100 pilots with startups and Unilever brands – stimulating and facilitating experimentation across the organisation.

One recent success is with San Francisco-based Discuss.io, a small startup with customers in the bay area. After receiving mentorship from Unilever Foundry and support from the Global CMI team, they developed their proposition to truly deliver against Unilever’s challenges within the area of marketing intelligence. They have now scaled across the organisation in over 20 countries and in 14 languages.

Unilever Foundry’s expansion to Ireland follows the launch earlier this year of LEVEL3, a co-working space in Singapore in partnership with Padang & Co.

Jonathan Hammond, Head of Unilever Foundry, said: “Unilever Foundry provides a single entry point for startups seeking to partner with Unilever, enabling the company’s brands and functions to experiment and pilot new technologies effectively. Born through Unilever Foundry’s own mission to collaborate, experiment, and pioneer for a sustainable future, Unilever Foundry at Dogpatch Labs is a physical manifestation of this ethos and gives Unilever access to a growing European startup community.”

Nick Johnson, Managing Director at Unilever Ireland, said: “Unilever is an industry leader when it comes to cultivating new collaborations with startups and this new partnership with Dogpatch Labs enables us to expand on our efforts to date in Ireland. Working with Irish startups such as ‘Laundrie’ (an on-demand cleaning service app) or ‘BuyMie’ (a same-day grocery delivery) is helping us address a growing imperative to connect with consumers in more meaningful ways, to leverage data and to embed our products in new app enabled services.”

Patrick Walsh, Managing Director of Dogpatch Labs said: “As we evolve as a startup hub and platform for innovation, we have chosen to focus our efforts onfostering key industries where we see growth prospects. There is big opportunity in the FMCG space and Unilever is a natural partner for us to foster startups and help drive innovation and progress in the industry.”

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